PHP Apple Enhanced Push Notification read error response

In PHP, how do you use fread() to check if there is an error response when sending enhanced push notifications?

I have read the Apple docs, a couple vague posts thru Google, and a couple questions/answers here on SO but this was still very confusing.

Here is what I looked at:http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/RemoteNotificationsPG/IPhoneOSClientImp/IPhoneOSClientImp.htmlhttp://stackoverflow.com/questions/6665921/reading-error-from-apple-enhanced-push-notification-with-php iPhone Push Notification - Error response problem

I am going to answer my own question below, based on the fact that: (1) I found this a very confusing topic, and (2) I had to piece the information together with lots of trial and error to get it to work, and (3) this blog post that says it is encouraged: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/07/its-ok-to-ask-and-answer-your-own-questions/

When you send a push notification, there are several problems:

• If there is a problem, Apple will disconnect you but you don't know about it. When you use basic notifications there is no way to know if they were all sent or not. SOLUTION: This is the whole point of using an enhanced notification and then checking for an error response. Note that we will use "ORDER BY id" in database query and then use the id as the identifier that we send in notification. This way, if there is a problem, we know exactly which row in the db caused the problem (and therefore we know when Apple disconnected us and stopped sending the notifications). We can then continue sending Push notifications to all the rows after the row that caused the problem, without having to resend to the ones we already sent to.
• Apple does NOT send any response back if everything is ok, so this can cause your script to pause and wait forever while fread() is waiting for data that is not coming. SOLUTION: Need to set stream_set_blocking to 0 so that fread always returns right away. Note that this causes another minor issue that fread can return before it receives an error response, but see the workaround in the code, which is just to pause for 1/2 a second AFTER all your sending is done and then check fread one more time.
• You can send multiple push notifications much faster than it takes an error response to get back to you. SOLUTION: Again this is the same workaround mentioned above... pause for 1/2 a second AFTER all your sending is done and then check fread one more time.

Here is my solution using PHP, which addresses all my problems that I encountered. Its pretty basic but gets the job done. I have tested it with sending a few notifications at a time as well as sending out 120,000 at one time.

<?php /* * Read Error Response when sending Apple Enhanced Push Notification * * This assumes your iOS devices have the proper code to add their device tokens * to the db and also the proper code to receive push notifications when sent. * */ //database $host = "localhost"; $user = "my_db_username"; $pass = "my_db_password"; $dbname = "my_db_name"; $con = mysql_connect($host,$user,$pass); if (!$con) { die('Could not connect to database: ' . mysql_error()); } else { mysql_select_db($dbname, $con); } // IMPORTANT: make sure you ORDER BY id column $result = mysql_query("SELECT id,token FROM `device_tokens` ORDER BY id"); //Setup notification message $body = array(); $body['aps'] = array('alert' => 'My push notification message!'); $body['aps']['notifurl'] = 'http://www.mydomain.com'; $body['aps']['badge'] = 1; //Setup stream (connect to Apple Push Server) $ctx = stream_context_create(); stream_context_set_option($ctx, 'ssl', 'passphrase', 'password_for_apns.pem_file'); stream_context_set_option($ctx, 'ssl', 'local_cert', 'apns.pem'); $fp = stream_socket_client('ssl://gateway.push.apple.com:2195', $err, $errstr, 60, STREAM_CLIENT_

Hi. I implemented you're code in my (working) pusher class. Strangely I dont't ever get a response from apple. The $apple_error_response is always false. But some of the push messages ARE delivered, and some just fail. Have you any idea why I don't get any response? –  Michael Kunst Sep 16 '13 at 12:54

I posted this almost a year and a half ago and stopped using push notifications not long after so I don't really remember all the issues I dealt with. For debugging create list of tokens that you know work then copy tokens & modify so they will fail (so 5 known good & 5 known bad). Then also once you have accepted push notification on your device and verified that you receive it, disable the push notifications on that device and see what happens when you try to send to that token again. Also check Apple's documentation to make sure they did not change something on how their server responds. –  jsherk Sep 16 '13 at 17:05

Thanks for your answer. I had to increase the usleep time to one second, then it worked (mostly). But I still wasnt sure if the answer would be there in this time. So I made a loop which checks for an answer every 50 miliseconds, and if it didnt come at all after 5 seconds it returns. –  Michael Kunst Sep 17 '13 at 7:59

Am not sure the content of you code but you should try ApnsPHP it is well tested works perfectly fine and it able to handle all possible exception and error for you.

Other Alternatives

https://github.com/sebastianborggrewe/PHP-Apple-Push-Notification-Serverhttps://github.com/bortuzar/PHP-Mysql---Apple-Push-Notification-Server

Have tested 2 out of the 3 i examples and did not have issue of implementation and error management.

Thanks

:)